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New Mac Purchase – a few questions
Hello-
I’m considering the purchase of a new G5 that I’d like to put a Decklink HD and SATA RAID card in (probably the Sonnet Tempo-8X eSATA). The local Apple store has a decent deal on a new, older dual 2.5ghz with the NVidia Ultra 6800 video card, but I’m nervous about losing 1 of only 3 PCI-X slots. I guess my question is whether anyone thinks I’ll miss that slot or if I should even have it populated if it’ll be sharing a bus with either the HD or RAID card??? Which slots should the respective cards go in or does it matter?
Thanks in advance,
Sean
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9 Replies
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My advice to you is to purchase the Sonnet card right now, and play with it before you get in too deep. Make sure that it is stable enough for you. Just don’t believe what you read on these forums – try it yourself before making a big investment.
bob Zelin
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Here’s a good comparison between the old and the new models, hope this can help a little too:
https://www.barefeats.com/g527.html
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I would recommend this exact same setup. I am currently using a dual 2.5 GHz. G5, nVidia 6800 Ultra (with 30″). I am using the Sonnet Tempo-X 4+4 right now, but I will soon switch to the Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 8. I am also getting the Multibridge Studio when available. I am using the Firmtek SeriTek external SATA enclosures. Just don’t use either the Maxtor Diamondmax 10 300GB SATA drives, or the Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB drives with the Sonnet cards. There seems to be an issue with these drives and a chip used on the Sonnet cards. I would recommend going for the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA drives. Can you think of another PCI card you would also need to use? I couldn’t, so I’m not worried about having all slots filled…
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It’s good to hear from someone happy with the setup. How do you like those external enclosures? Are you using the Seagate drives? What kind of test speeds are you getting with your setup?
Thanks!
Sean
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don’t ever buy an old mac retail. they’re just trying to dump them. buy an old one on ebay cheap or better yet buy the new model from apple. the new macs are a deal!
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https://www.barefeats.com/hard45.html
I don’t have the Seagate drives yet. I am still stuck with 4 Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB drives which have been nothing but trouble. I need to get those Seagate drives ASAP but I just bought my FCP Studio upgrade and can’t afford 4 x $329 at the moment. Barefeats have done some tests using the Sonnet card and Seagate drives. Look for the Seagate/slot 3 results (8 drives) (the Decklink will take slot 4). If only using 4 drives expect about half that. You will also want to use Soft RAID 3.1.3 to partition off the last sectors of the drives to avoid the speed decrease as the RAID reaches capacity. This way you can make sure it never drops below your bandwidth requirements (180MB/sec?). I really like the Firmtek enclosures… I am using 2 of them at the moment.
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I’m working with a new 2.3ghz G5 and the Sonnet External 8 port card. I’m using the MacGuru’s 8 drive hot swap tower with eight Seagate 7200.8 400GB drives (and the BM HD Pro card). I have two 4 drive RAIDs set up, I’m getting about 250MB for reads and writes. The drives are striped with SoftRAID. They’re great and super fast. I’m just in test mode now – getting ready to edit a HD feature in July that’s 720p 10-bit 4:2:2 at 23.98fps. So, 250MB/sec is more than enough. I’m doing tests with converted DVCPro HD footage. A little different than the DV workflows that I’m used to, but it’s coming along. My one problem is that FCP 4.5 freezes up the drives when I wake from sleep. This doesn’t happen when I’m using the drives and not FCP. But hopefully this will clear up very soon with FCP 5. Oh, the Burly Box was a good deal and easy to put together, but the three fans are pretty loud. I have to work on a sound proofing solution. I went with the 2.3Ghz, since it didn’t have liquid cooling, which I’ve been hearing rumors about potential leakage.
Sean Meredith
“Dante’s Inferno” -
I’m using the firmtek enclosure + card with 2 seagate 200 GB drives (for SD video). BMD card in the #4 PCI slot of a 2Ghz G5 and the firmtek card in slot #3, SCSI card in slot #2: = No Problems at all! The SCSI card is not going at full speed though, but the SATA card is?
Good luck with your shopping
/Mathias
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I just picked up a couple of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400GB SATA drives. These are the best I’ve used so far… Now I just need to get rid of these Maxtor MaXLine III 300GB drives, they don’t work with the Sonnet Tempo-X cards.
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